Amazon tribe sighting raises contact dilemma

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RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Dramatic photographs of
previously unfound Amazon Indians have highlighted the
precariousness of the few remaining "lost" tribes and the
dangers they face from contact with outsiders.

By Stuart Grudgings

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Dramatic photographs of
previously unfound Amazon Indians have highlighted the
precariousness of the few remaining "lost" tribes and the
dangers they face from contact with outsiders.

The bow-and-arrow wielding Indians in the pictures released
on Thursday are likely the remnants of a larger tribe who were
forced deeper into the forest by encroaching settlement,
experts said.

Rather than being "lost," they have likely had plenty of
contact with other indigenous groups over the years, said
Thomas Lovejoy, an Amazon expert who is president of The Heinz
Center in Washington.

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"I think there is an ethical question whether you can in
the end keep them from any contact and I think the answer to
that is no," Lovejoy said.

"The right answer is to have the kind of contact and change
that the tribes themselves manage the pace of it."

The Brazil-Peru border area is one of the world's last
refuges for such groups, with more than 50 uncontacted tribes
thought to live there out of the estimated 100 worldwide.

They are increasingly at risk from development, especially
on the Peruvian side which has been slower than Brazil to
recognize protected areas for indigenous people.

Jose Carlos Meirelles, an official with Brazil's Indian
protection agency who was on the helicopter that overflew the
tribe, said they should be left alone as much as possible.

"While we are getting arrows in the face, it's fine," he
told Brazil's Globo newspaper. "The day that they are
well-behaved, they are finished."

Contact with outsiders has historically been disastrous for
Brazil's Indians, who now number about 350,000 compared to up
to 5 million when the first Europeans arrived.

"In 508 years of history, out of the thousands of tribes
that exist none have adapted well to society in Brazil," said
Sydney Possuelo, a former official with Brazil's Indian
protection agency who founded its isolated tribes department.

CONCERN OVER PERU POLICY

In recent years, though, tribes like the Yanomami have
succeeded in winning greater protection by becoming more
politically organized and forming links with foreign
conservationists.

"It's not about making that decision for them. It's about
making time and space to make that decision themselves," said
David Hill of the Survival International group.

More than half of the Murunahua tribe in Peru died of colds
and other illness after they were contacted as a result of
development for the first time in 1996, Hill said.

Sightings of such tribes are not uncommon, occurring once
every few years in the Brazil-Peru border area where there are
estimated to be more than 50 out of the total global number of
100 uncontacted tribes.

In 1998, a 200-strong tribe was discovered by Possuelo
living in huts under the forest canopy, also in Acre state near
the Brazil-Peru border.

In September last year, ecologists looking for illegal
loggers in Peru spotted a little-known nomadic tribe deep in
the Amazon.

The sighting underscored worries among rights groups that
oil and gas exploration being pushed by the Peruvian
government, as well as logging, is putting tribes at risk.

Peru has no equivalent to Brazil's long-standing Indian
affairs department, which has a policy of no contact with
unknown tribes.

"There is a lot of logging going on over on the Peruvian
side," Hill said. "It's had all kinds of effects on the groups
living there, particularly on the uncontacted groups -- it's
led to violent conflicts and deaths."

In May, Peru's petroleum agency Perupetro said it would
exclude areas where isolated tribes live from an auction of oil
and gas concessions. Perupetro had been under pressure to limit
exploration activities near tribal areas, and had cast doubt on
the existence of isolated groups, angering activists.

(Additional reporting by Pedro Fonseca in Rio and Terry
Wade in Lima; editing by Angus MacSwan)